Research Symposium

BIO

Isabella Del Toro is a freshman at Florida State University. She is majoring in Biological Science with a minor in Chemistry, and is on a Marine Biology track. This year, she is conducting research regarding animal enrichment under the mentorship of Rob Duarte.

Toys for Animals: Enrichment Through Collaboration

Abstract

Animal enrichment is defined as species-specific stimuli that allow animals to express natural behaviors to improve their physical and psychological well-being. This study focuses on analyzing how the collaboration during the 2025 Fall Semester between FSU students and the Jacksonville Zoo benefited both the students' learning and the zoo's animal enrichment program through research. While zoo-university partnerships are encouraged, the specific dynamics of how they succeed are not well-documented. By evaluating this partnership, future collaborations can implement sustainable operations that allow the growth of interorganizational relations between research universities and zoos. To gain this knowledge, we utilized Qualtrics to send out surveys to all the participants once the project had been completed. Then, the data was analyzed to find overall impressions and commonalities in the participants’ thoughts about the project’s process. The students mentioned learning a lot about animal behavior, enrichment, working with materials, and thinking innovatively, but some of their critiques and challenges included not allocating enough time to complete the finished product and having trouble transitioning from the prototyping to the construction stage. The zoo staff mentioned feeling extremely impressed and grateful for the partnership and finished objects, but disclosed struggling with time management and internal communication challenges. The results let us know what to improve next time and showed us the value in continuing this partnership and project. Moving forward, we will focus on researching how technology has been used for enrichment and finding a way to implement it into the zoo.

Keywords: research, enrichment, animal, zoo, partnership, toys